Thinking on switching to BIMcloud... thoughts?

[agroni]

I am going to write this topic here, hoping it is the right place.
We are thinking of developing on project between two offices via BIMcloud. The models though will be separated in multiple teamwork files due to the size of the project, therefore there will be teams working on those parts. Those files won't land into a single file and not hotlink between each other.
I plan to have a separate TW File for publishing purposes (using PMKs).

What interests me is the possibility to save files on the BIMcloud, such as PDF, DWG or JPG, that are going to be linked directly into the Teamwork files. I am also planing to save PMK and MOD files on the BIMcloud. I have read on the forum that it is not possible to update those files on the BIMcloud, because they need to be deleted and uploaded again...true in AC24?

Does anybody have experience with such synchronization processes. It is noticeably better then the BIMcloud basic? Is a publishing task also faster? Is a publishing of a PMK straight to the BIMcloud fast?
What is your experience?

[Karl Ottenstein]

agroni wrote:
I am going to write this topic here, hoping it is the right place.

Nope. Moved to Teamwork/BIMCloud 🙂

[Noemi Balogh]

Hi agroni,

I might be not 100% authentic, as I'm not a regular user of the application, but I leave my thought here, which hopefully help you in your decision.

BIMcloud and BIMcloud as a Service are actively developed, and both have additional performance related developments in the background, which are not available from BIMcloud Basic.

In case of BIMcloud, you can better scale it compared to BIMcloud Basic, as:

• you need to manage only one BIMcloud Manager for all of your Archicad versions,

• BIMcloud Manager and BIMcloud Server can be installed on different computers,

• you can add an additional BIMcloud Server any time to the system whenever it is needed,

• and you can move your snapshots to an external folder to save space on the expensive server hardware.

As you mention, since BIMcloud 2020.2, BIMcloud and BIMcloud as a Service can host other file types (e.g. PDF, PMK, JPG, etc.) besides the regular Archicad Teamwork Projects and BIMcloud Libraries. I have great news regarding the PMK issue you mention - in the latest Archicad 24 update, we fixed this problem, so from now you can easily update your PMKs from your BIMcloud without a need to relink any of them. See DEF-2945 TEAMWORK/DOCUMENT: Previously published PMK files on BIMcloud could not be updated after the file was re-published.

Performance of publishing still depends on your hardware and network, as well as on the size of the publisher set and the complexity of the project. Drawing updates take the same amount of time as they do when you publish them locally, so if a project is big and complex, and has tons of drawings, it won't be published faster just because it is published to BIMcloud.

Publishing files to BIMcloud from Archicad works this way that Archicad first publishes files locally, to have a kind of backup in case the upload would fail, e.g. due to a longer network issue, then uploads them automatically to BIMcloud. From my experience, with good internet service, the upload part is really fast and does not add a visible amount of time to the whole process.

I hope some people with their own experience will join this conversation, I'm also eager to hear your feedback!

On the other hand, I hope I could give you some valuable comments to make your own decision.

Kind regards,
Noémi

[agroni]

Hi Noemi,

thank you for your long explanation.
We will be shifting to BIMcloud soon on a project. One thing though wich I still don't understand is the marketing of this product. Those four aspects which you mentioned deal with BIM Management of the platform which does not impact the user directly. On the other one needs to pay per user to get BIMcloud...
Our workstations and IT-Structure is on the best level, therefore keeping my fingers crossed about the performance.